


Normalcy

by exfatalist



Category: Young Avengers
Genre: Depression, Gen, Post-Avengers: Children's Crusade, Pre-Relaunch
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-02-20
Updated: 2013-02-20
Packaged: 2017-11-29 23:32:14
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,405
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/692793
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/exfatalist/pseuds/exfatalist
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Teddy appreciates all the Kaplans do for him because he’s getting back something he lost, but Tommy appreciates it because it’s something he never had.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Normalcy

This morning, they had a bunk bed.  
  
It had been shoved lengthwise against the wall to save space. Tommy had called top bunk and Teddy had taped his Captain America poster up on the wall just beneath the bottom of the top frame.  
  
So, coming home from basketball practice to see not a bunk bed is ... weird.  
  
Really weird.  
  
“I think it turned back into a pumpkin,” Tommy offers. He’s sitting on the foot of the twin-sized bed, stuffing not particularly well-folded shirts from a laundry basket into his gym duffel.  
  
Teddy doesn’t need to ask what the hell Tommy means, but he does anyway.  
  
Last year, when he first moved to the Chelsea condo to live with the Kaplans, the bed in the guest room had been the very same neatly made twin topped with decorative pillows. Billy expanded it to a full mattress, rearranging the other furniture in the room like Tetris pieces with a flicker of blue magic, so everything fit as if it had always been arranged that way.  
  
A few months later, when Teddy convinced Tommy and Billy convinced his parents, using the same rationale that Osborne wasn’t really out to make the world any safer, Billy’s magic turned the full-sized mattress into a bunk bed.  
  
Now, the bunk bed is gone. The full-sized bed is gone. The furniture is back in its original position and the neatly made twin is laden with decorative pillows once more. One of the pillows is old, embroidered in Hebrew, something Teddy knows Mrs. Kaplan took and put on a chair in the master bedroom after Billy rearranged things.  
  
It isn’t the first time any of them have wondered if there’s a statute of limitations on the things Billy has magically altered.  
  
It isn’t the first time Teddy has wondered if Billy’s powers are tied to his emotional state, either.  
  
(No, the first time he wondered _that_ , there had been some bigots and a bomb and someone decided to invade Latveria.)  
  
“It’s midnight,” the speedster states with a shrug, as if that properly answers Teddy’s question. “The ball’s over. Time to go back to how things were before.”  
  
If Osborne really was the only reason they wanted Tommy living with them, the threat had long since passed.  
  
But all three of them know that isn’t really why.  
  
Osborne had just been the convenient excuse of the moment, the justification that let either of the twins refuse to acknowledge any kind of feelings.  
  
“Billy can fix it,” Teddy points out and immediately knows that he’s lying. Billy spent the first three weeks after Latveria trying to wish himself or his powers out of existence, whispering over and over in the dark, while Teddy sat outside his bedroom, back to the door, just listening and not knowing what to do to make things better. Billy doesn’t want anything to do with magic anymore.  
  
Tommy looks unimpressed, both silver eyebrows disappearing under the fall of his bangs he raises them so far.  
  
“We could ask Mr. and Mrs. Kaplan - ”  
  
“For what? A _bed_?” Tommy cuts him off. “Look, it’s bad enough they feed me and clothe me and - look at this!” He pulls one of the sweater vests of his school uniform from the laundry basket and holds it up like it might be contaminated.  
  
But Teddy knows that Tommy doesn’t mind the school that much. In fact, Teddy would go so far as to say Tommy loves the school, uniform and all, because he’s never _had_ anything like it.  
  
He’s never had anything like _this_.  
  
Like a family.  
  
Teddy appreciates all the Kaplans do for him because he’s getting back something he lost, but Tommy appreciates it because it’s something he never had.  
  
Tommy does his homework almost entirely without complaint and smiles when he thinks no one is looking at the grades that reflect his hard work. Tommy has a folder he thinks Teddy doesn’t know about with college brochures and applications tucked inside. Tommy is the first at the dinner table and usually offers to wash the dishes, because it’s just too normal not to. Tommy looks after Billy’s little brothers on most Saturday nights, tells the Kaplans he’ll have them in bed by nine, and actually follows through with it.  
  
Tommy breaks Teddy’s heart a little every day, living the life his twin can’t seem to appreciate like it’s a goddamn _gift_.  
  
And he breaks it a little more when he admits, finally, with drooping shoulders, “I can’t ask them for anything else.”  
  
“So,” Teddy starts, needing to work himself up to actually getting his voice steady, “you’re just going to ... go?”  
  
Tommy nods, once, without looking up from the sweater vest he’s holding between his hands.  
  
“Where? Back to Jersey?”  
  
The moment he says it, Teddy realizes it’s the wrong question to ask. Tommy balls up the sweater vest and drops it back into the laundry basket, in favor of a pair of jeans he wads up and shoves violently into his bag. “Yeah,” he scoffs. “Right.”  
  
“Bishop Publishing?” Teddy tries again, but the damage is done.  
  
Tommy kicks the laundry basket out of his way as he gets to his feet, making an abortive motion to collect his other possessions in the room before apparently thinking better of it. “Look, what does it matter?” he demands, frustrated strain in his voice.  
  
“You’re my friend,” Teddy points out, reaching down to gather up the basket and its fallen contents. It gives him something to do, somewhere to look. “And Billy’s your brother. He needs you.”  
  
“No, he needs prozac,” Tommy counters. He’s letting his frustration leak out into insults and Teddy’s pretty jealous of it, having wanted to give into that for weeks. But he can never quite bring himself to do it.  
  
“He needs - ” Teddy tries but fails to argue in the face of Tommy’s unimpressed expression.  
  
Eventually, all Teddy can do is shrug his shoulders. “ _I_ need someone who isn’t him.”  
  
It’s a quiet admission and laden with more than a little _guilt_ at finally giving it voice.  
  
When Tommy doesn’t say anything - because what does somebody say to that? - all Teddy can do is go on, like the floodgates are open.  
  
“I need you,” he says and his voice cracks just a little. “I need a friend to talk to, to do homework with, to play video games and watch movies and pretend for a while that we haven’t seen people die right in front of us. I need someone who’s been there and understands and isn’t going to let themselves be _broken_ by it.”  
  
Halfway through cleaning up the tipped over basket, Teddy gives up and slumps onto the floor next to it with a heavy sigh. “I need something normal,” he says and it kind of kills him. He always figured normal was overrated, because he grew up a freak, but now it’s like salve on a burn.. At least normal, for him, is anything _bu_ t by standard definition.  
  
Teddy looks up, finding Tommy staring at him with a look of confused disbelief, and says: “ _You_ need it, too.”  
  
It isn’t the right thing to say, he can tell by the way Tommy clenches his fists and works his jaw, but it’s what needed to be said.  
  
After a long moment, Tommy nudges the laundry basket to one side and drops onto the floor to sit next to Teddy. “No,” he protests and it’s quiet, but still angry. “I don’t get to be normal, Altman.”  
  
“Yeah, you do,” Teddy counters. He leans to one side, bumping his shoulder into Tommy’s the way he used to with Billy to bring him out of a slump of self-doubt. The way he _can’t_ with Billy anymore, like fear and self-loathing and guilt have filled the other boy up with nitro and he’ll explode at the slightest touch. “Just stay until graduation. A few more months.”  
  
Tommy bumps back, then just leans, like he’s suddenly too tired to move or argue his point further. “And sleep where?”  
  
“Bed,” Teddy offers, because he won’t ask Billy to fix things and Tommy won’t ask the Kaplans for help and it’s the best compromise he can come up with on the fly. “I’ve got a sleeping bag.”  
  
The smile Tommy gives is small, sad. “You really need me to stay that bad, huh?”  
  
Teddy nods and hates himself for it.  
  
“Yeah. I do.”


End file.
